Choreographer Twyla Tharp and American Ballet Theatre have had a mutually advantageous relationship for 20 years now, a good long run in a fickle world.
The once-iconoclastic Tharp alighted at ABT as an artistic associate in the late 1980s. She then ditched her fabulous modern dance company and has been on a roller coaster career ever since, zinging from Broadway musicals to movies, back to modern dance and then again to ballet.
For its part, ABT has reaped 16 world premieres from the award-winning Tharp, who is an audience favorite.
Tharp's ballet career has been fitful, however, and the latest piece, "Rabbit and Rogue," is not such a prize. Seen Wednesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center (which co-commissioned it), it is an agitated amalgamation of all manner of dance styles, topped with Tharp's own distinct "alphabet," from arabesque to yoga.
Underneath the excessive melange, though, lives a core idea that's not half bad, about balance and power as embodied by the two male leads, Ethan Stiefel and Herman Cornejo (on Wednesday). If you could pare away "Rabbit and Rogue's" indulgences, you would find a much smaller ballet.
One difficulty, perhaps, was Tharp's pairing with first-time ballet composer Danny Elfman (the rock-TV-film composer, who was in Wednesday night's audience). He supplied a composition so eclectic that it fueled Tharp's taste for smorgasbord.
Happily, conductor Ormsby Wilkins ably led the Pacific Symphony musicians through all its complexities: with minimalist repetition, percussive thunder and a lovely thematic melody that was worth expansion.
Stiefel, the Rogue, started off, twitching and skipping, isolated in an overhead spot (lighting by Brad Fields). Cornejo, the Rabbit, jogged onstage next for a whirling introduction. When the pair popped up for playful combat, the ballet jelled, and Tharp was able to stretch the creative capacities, and also our expectations, of these two terrific artists.
In the first part, the ensemble held hands and threaded on and off like a lost folk dance troupe. Everyone's energy was high, and the threads of a developing relationship led us through Tharp's disorderly, mishmash phrases.
In succeeding sections, however, the dance ideas thinned considerably. It wasn't that the story was dropped -- there really wasn't one to begin with -- but connections between steps and music, between one dancer and another, frayed as "Rabbit and Rogue" dragged on.
